Alex MacDowall secured his fifth Yokohama Independents’ podium of the season during round 15 of the 2012 World Touring Car Championship season at Curitiba, Brazil. His results mean that he has moved back into the top four of the Yokohama Independents’.
On his first visit to the Brazilian circuit, the bamboo engineering driver was immediately on the pace, finishing two of the three practice sessions as the fastest Yokohama Independent driver. He was never out of the top six and he finished sixth fastest in qualifying, and second Independent.
Round 15 saw the Cumbrian hold his position off the rolling start and he was able to put pressure on the sister bamboo engineering Cruze of Michel Nykjaer – the Danish driver had been drafted in to replace Pasquale Di Sabatino, who had to miss Curitiba due to illness.
MacDowall was right on the tail of his team-mate at the midway point of the race and putting the pressure on but mindful of the gap between the two races he decided not to make a rash move and thus settled for sixth overall and second in the Yokohama Independents – he also set the fastest Independent lap of the race.
Lining up fifth for the reverse grid race, MacDowall was confident of a similar result but a slow getaway saw MacDowall drop down the order to 14th.
His race pace meant he could fight his way back up the order and by the time the pace reached its mid point mark he was back inside the top ten, before being demoted to 11th by the SEAT duo of Tiago Monteiro and Alexey Dudukalo. He finished 11th overall and fifth in the Independents battle.
“Overall it’s been a great weekend, we were quick from the first session on Friday and definitely showed we’ve closed the pace to the works cars”, commented Alex, “We thought we’d be in good shape at Curitiba and it all worked out quite well.
“Race one was good, we were really competitive, set the fastest Indy lap and moved into fourth in the championship so I was really happy with that. Unfortunately the start of race two really cost us, the car just bogged down off the line and nearly everyone went past but I managed to get back to finish fifth in the Independents so that’s not bad.”
MacDowall heads into a nine week break before rounds 17 and 18 of the 2012 World Touring Car Championship, which will take place at the Sonoma Raceway in California over the 22/23 September.